Assessing What College Students are Really Learning

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

By Ryan Rhodes

What are college students really learning? Are students
provided the necessary skills to be competitive in the labor market? How
can this be measured? These questions and more were answered in the
March 17 lecture, "What are College Students Really Learning: How
Available Evidence and New Approaches to Assessment Can Help," by
Richard Arum, Ph.D., dean of the School of Education at University of
California, Irvine. Arum discussed how the U.S. higher education system
is failing in three critical assessment areas – student completion,
learning outcomes and post-college transitions.

Student study time – a metric in which U.S. students
scored poorly – and student motivation – shown to decrease after a
student's first year – were among his findings.

"I liked the international comparisons on student study
time. The U.S. was one of the lowest performing countries. However, I'm
certain there are things we do here in the U.S. that are unparalleled,"
said Anisha Saini, Higher Education master's degree student.

Forty-five percent of students, according to available
data, take no classes that require writing more than twenty pages per
semester. Additionally, most courses were found to carry a reading
requirement of fewer than 40 pages per week.

"The first step in addressing the problem is getting the
data on how we are doing – and this is Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's
[co-author] important contribution. Both faculty and administrators at
our colleges, but also students and their parents are now in a position
to begin demanding – and expecting – real academic rigor --- from the
college experience and worrying less about the amenities in the dorms
and the athletic facilities!," said Martin Finkelstein, professor in the
Department of Education Leadership, Management and Policy and an
organizer of the event.

Richard Arum signs his book for an attendee.

Student performance on the CLA (Collegiate Learning
Assessment) – a measure of reasoning, writing and critical thinking –
can be a key predictor in job performance. Findings show those who
scored poorly were more likely to lose a job, indicating technical and
skills training is only one component of producing market ready
graduates.

"In a moment when serious concerns are being voiced about
the cost and value of a college education, Arum and Roksa provide us
with empirical answers to very important questions: How much are
students in four-year, residential colleges actually learning? That is,
to what extent is the college experience improving those critical
thinking, problem solving skills that employers say they want? Their
answer must give all of us in higher education pause: Apparently not
much. Their data shows that today's students study very little and spend
much more time taking advantage of the social aspects of the college
experience," said Finkelstein.

Arum stressed that in addition to participation in the
labor market, a higher education degree is crucial for adults to instill
the necessary skills to critically reason and make sense of the world,
contributing to productive democratic citizenship.

Higher Education Graduate Students represented at the event.

"It was interesting how we learned that many college
graduates do not stay informed with the news and world around them. We
should look at larger implications why students are not staying actively
engaged," noted Andrea Delpriore, Higher Education Leadership,
Management and Policy doctoral student.

Arum and colleagues have made available tools and
resources to support postsecondary student learning through the
Measuring College Learning Project and Resource Center. The Center is
creating learning and assessment goals and encouraging fruitful dialogue
between faculty and employers to prepare students for the labor market.

"It was great to share Dr. Arum's insights on how to define and
measure learning. It is now obvious that higher education institutions
need to focus more on educational outcomes," said Olga Komissarova,
doctoral student in the Higher Education Leadership, Management and
Policy program.

The lecture, made possible through the vision and
generosity of the College of Education and Human Services, is the second
in the Higher Education Program's Distinguished Speaker Series, which
brings prominent speakers and experts to the Seton Hall campus to
present on vital and current issues facing the higher education
community.

Richard Arum recently served as senior
fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2013 -2015; and director
of the Education Research Program at the Social Science Research Council from
2006 - 2013, where he oversaw the development of the Research Alliance for New
York City Schools, a research consortium designed to conduct ongoing evaluation
of the New York City public schools. He is coauthor of Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates (University
of Chicago Press, 2014) and Academically
Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press,
2011); as well as coeditor of Improving
Quality in American Higher Education: Learning Outcomes and Assessment for the
21st Century (Jossey-Bass, 2016) and Stratification
in Higher Education: A Comparative Study (Stanford University Press, 2007),
which examines expansion, differentiation and access to higher education in
fifteen countries. He received a Master of Education in Teaching and Curriculum
from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of
California, Berkeley.